


hot cocoa

by connorswhisk



Series: omgcp friendship week 2020 [5]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, prompt: family, so...dex angst :(, the frogs...they love each other so much...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:08:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26513458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/connorswhisk/pseuds/connorswhisk
Summary: “Hey, Dex, are you going home for the holidays?”It’s a simple question, so Chowder doesn’t understand why Dex’s jaw tightens when he asks it.
Series: omgcp friendship week 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1922701
Comments: 4
Kudos: 58





	hot cocoa

“Hey, Dex, are you going home for the holidays?”

It’s a simple question, so Chowder doesn’t understand why Dex’s jaw tightens when he asks it.

“Aw, c’mon,” Nursey says, pouring himself another mug of hot cocoa. The sky is pouring silvery sheets of cold rain outside the window, and the Frogs are warming up in the kitchen, or at least trying to. Dex is still working on fixing some parts of the Haus’s central heating.

“Of course Dex is going home,” Nursey continues, passing a mug to Chowder now. “He always does. Has ever since freshman year. Why would he stop now?”

Nursey clearly didn’t notice the jaw tighten.

“I don’t know,” Chowder mumbles, wondering if Dex wants to talk about it or not. “I was just wondering.”

But suddenly, Nursey seems to cotton on, too. “Wait, Poindexter,” he says slowly. “ _Are_ you going home?”

Dex finally moves, shaking his head slightly and seeming to snap out of some sort of trance. “I - well, I’m not sure…no,” he decides firmly.

“Why not?” Chowder asks.

Dex sighs. “Um. I didn’t tell you guys, but over the summer, I…I came out to my family.”

“Oh,” Nursey says. “Ok.”

“Congratulations?” Chowder’s not sure if that’s a good thing or not, but judging by Dex’s expression, maybe not so much.

“Uh,” Nursey says. “How did it go?”

Dex picks at a hangnail, seeming to focus all of his concentration onto that instead of his friends. “It, uh…well, not _bad,_ but…”

“Dex,” Chowder says quietly, considering reaching across the table and holding his hand or patting his shoulder or _something,_ but thinking better of it. “It’s ok.”

Dex is silent for a few seconds, and then he sighs again, and a waterfall of words seems to spill out all at once. “I didn’t even really mean to do it. We were just sitting at the table, eating dinner, and Mom made some comment about how now that I’m captain, I’ll be sure to _finally_ get a girlfriend, and I…it just sort of _came out of me,_ and then there was this really awkward silence, and Mom said, ‘Ok,’ but I could tell she was really shocked, and my sister seemed ok, but my younger _brother,_ ” he says icily. “started _laughing._ But that wasn’t even the worst part, because my father just…he didn’t say or do _anything._ He just sort of… _looked_ at me.” Dex swallows. “And I have no idea what he was thinking.”

Chowder exchanges a glance with Nursey. He looks concerned, eyebrows drawn and teeth worrying at his lower lip, and Chowder is pretty sure he looks the same.

“So,” Nursey starts, then clears his throat. “So, then what happened?”

Dex shrugs. “We didn’t really talk about it again. I wouldn’t say things went back to normal, but we just pretended it never happened, except for when Dylan would make a joke and Mom would shut him up. It was like this big, heavy _cloud_ hanging over us, but no one wanted to admit that it was there. It was weird. So when they asked me to come down for Christmas, I told them I had some team planning I needed to work on instead.”

Chowder feels his heart break. Dex is such a great guy, and he doesn’t deserve any of this. It’s not fair.

“Don’t your parents know about Bitty and Jack, though?” he asks desperately. “I mean, even Samwell’s got the ‘1 in 4 and maybe more…’”

Dex shrugs again. “I guess they didn’t really care about all that, because it wasn’t directly affecting _me._ As long as I stayed in my own little bubble they were fine, but now…now they’re not, I guess.” He continues picking at his nail. “I mean, I don’t know. Colleen and Mom seem ok, I think they just need some time. But Dylan kept making all these jokes, and I don’t remember the last time I held a one-on-one conversation with my dad.”

There’s a silence, which Nursey eventually breaks by asking, “Do you want hot chocolate?”

For a second, Chowder thinks Dex is going to yell at him, but instead he finally lifts his head, looks at Nursey gratefully, and says, “Yes. _Please._ ”

Nursey sets to pouring a cup, clearly just to give his hands something to do. Chowder wishes he’d offered to make it himself, because his ADHD tends to spike when he’s in a tense situation like this, and his fingers are fidgeting in his lap.

“Dex, I’m so sorry,” Chowder says, wondering, once again, if he should reach out and touch him, and deciding, once again, not to. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

Dex laughs bleakly, hollowly. He seems like he’s trying really hard not to cry. “I mean, they’re my family. I love them. I just…” He takes a shaky breath. “I mean, I don’t even have it that bad, not really. It could have been so much worse. They could have yelled at me or kicked me out or something, but they didn’t, so it’s ok. Other people go through that. I’m lucky,” he finishes quietly.

Nursey slams the kettle back down on the stove with a little more force than necessary, and Chowder, abandoning all pretense and just going with his gut, moves his hand across the table so it’s covering Dex’s own.

“Hey,” Chowder says. “It’s ok to be upset about it. You’re allowed to be upset. Yeah, it could have been worse, but it still wasn’t _great,_ and you _can_ feel angry about that. You can.”

Nursey turns around. “Dex, it doesn’t matter how it went down. If you don’t want to go home for Christmas, then I think you’re perfectly justified in doing that.” He sets Dex’s mug down in front of him, a few mini marshmallows bobbing at the surface. “Just because they didn’t yell at you doesn’t mean that what they did wasn’t homophobic.”

Dex lets out a laugh that sounds more like a sob, and a few tears trickle down his face. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. It’s just…they’re my family and all…”

“We’re your family, too,” Nursey says firmly, and Chowder nods emphatically.

“Yeah, Dex,” he says, squeezing his hand. “We are.”

Dex picks up his mug but doesn’t drink from it. “I don’t hate them,” he says quietly.

“You don’t have to.”

Dex takes a sip. “That’s good,” he says.

Nursey grins. “Really?”

“Not as good as Bitty’s,” Dex says, and Nursey scowls. “But still good.”

“Speaking of,” Chowder says. “Maybe you should talk to Bitty. His experience was pretty similar, right?”

“Yeah,” Dex says into his cup. “That’s probably a good idea.”

“But you can still talk to us, too,” Nursey says, laying a hand on Dex’s shoulder. “Any time.”

Chowder nods. “Yeah. We’re Frogs, dude.”

Dex smiles, a small smile, but still a smile, and says, “Frogs forever?”

Chowder and Nursey smile too. “Frogs forever.”


End file.
